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Yes, you can be "just a PICC nurse" despite the other comments. I did PICC's for 4 years without any certification behind me. I have since taken and passed the Appropriate National certification for Vascular Access, VA-BC offered through Association of Vascular Access, ava.org. You can't just take a class one day and be a PICC nurse the next day. There is a whole lot more too it than that. You need to be in a position that is willing to train you and then you need to stay there for at least a year before you can conosider yourself comfortable at doing them.
Another source is PICC Excellence. They DO offer classes on PICC insertions, but your not sticking a patient, thats a whole different thing. They are also a bit pricey.

I work cvicu and micu and have place picc lines for about 2yrs now. I have never recieved extra pay for a picc line placement. I became interested in picc line certification and placement because i wanted to advance my own skills and beef up my resume. However, I do not think it is fare that we are not payed anything extra as i am requested to place picc lines on the floor while i am in the unit with a pt load and i must rely on the charge nurse to cover my pts while i go to the floor for the hour or more that it takes to place the line and do all the paper work, wait on cxr verification, ect. associated with it. I have only recently started talking to my unit manager about compensation for picc line placement but doubt it will happen due to one or two nurses who are willing to come in on there days off or dont mind handing over there pt load for a couple hours to go to the floor to complete the insertion for no extra pay. I respect there diligence but believe that Picc line placement is an advAnced skill for an RN and therefore should be compensated as such. Until my facility agrees to start compensating me for PICC line placement, i have decided not to place them anymore and will refer the request to the nurses who dont mind practicing the advanced tech and accepting the responsibility that comes with it for NO extra pay..... Ok i guess i'll get off my soapbox now. Sorry for the rant.

That is SO typical of nurses and the nursing profession. One attains additional skills, the PTB decide they can use your advance skills free of charge, in the meantime, when you put your foot down and ask for more money, you have some, "Martyr Mary", who will come in do it free of charge, thereby undermining your attempt to make the hospital pay for your advanced skills. Which they should.

I feel the same way about my Critical Care skills. No, I did not learn to be a Critical Care Nurse in nursing school. I learned it by taking a Critical Care course, (At my expense), obtaining a job in Critical Care, and working in Critical care for over 25 years. No, med surg nurses cannot work in ICU. They do not have the education and training. Just like Cardiologists don't deliver babies, and Pediatricians don't do Open Heart Surgery.

The big difference is that Doctors have the power, clout, and $$$ to get what they want, which is more pay, and control over their work, and they BILL for their services.

I will say it again to refresh everyones' mind, because it is worth repeating:
As long as a Nurses' Professional Practice is rolled into the room rate, laundry. housekeeping, and the complimentary roll of toilet paper, we will never be seen on a patients' bill, or on the "Asset" side of the balance sheet. And the PTB want to keep it that way, to keep nursing invisible, and powerless.

it would be helpful to have had an understanding of functional groups and biochem prior to APRN school. If anything at all is to be added it should be that and a basic anatomy course, since regular A and P was pretty distant for most of us.

Everything in medicine is molecule based (really everything in life) and nobody should have prescriptive authority without understanding at least to a fairly basic extent things at a molecular level. Gen chem 100 at the time would not have been enough. A 2 semester integrated gen/ochem/bio chem course would do wonders for our profession. Of course with a medical focus.

I think we should indeed keep fighting, and as we demonstrate clinical competence and educational rigor I believe we will better prove our merits. I do not feel that we can go toe to toe against physician lobbyists based on our "3 P's," and I truly do not feel our required education required to become RNs is remotely analogous to the -ologies and training in medicine, i.e. internal medicine, that all physicians get. We do not need total parity in education. We do, in fact, need enhanced education covering the myriad topics that we so badly need to know. For our purpose, we do not need 3+ years of residency or 4 years of graduate education in training, yet if being truthful to ourselves we may all concede that there is little to no uniformity in education and training. For the simple fact that you can study your entire NP degree online never even seeing the host institution and pick a preceptor of your choosing and become a NP, we demonstrate a weakness. We are competing against one of the most educated professions in America who have demonstrated commitment to rigorous study and assessment. I simply think we need to better demonstrate this in our own professional training. My certification exam was largely devoid of clinical content, and even at a state, medical school affiliated NP program I had to find my own preceptors.

I would love to continue sending emails and believe me I've thought about becoming the sacraficial lamb and doing doctoral work to examine the merits of a more biomedical curriculum. Two caveats, I'm not quitting my employment, and I'm not going in debt over it. Give me some funding ideas, and I'll be glad to field the legitimate ones.

Most of the naysayers, such as myself, don't really care so much about the history or theory of nursing (or medicine). I, personally, do read a lot of history and find the history of psychiatry to be rather interesting and something that should be indulged during our training to become psychiatric specialists. How many psych NPs can tell me something about Emil Kraepelin?

A general model for what I feel NP school should include:

1 year biochem if even biochem-lite perhaps even combined with cellular bio, prosected anatomy, physiology in a semester with dedicated training in medical genetics, pathology in a semester, NO combined pathophys junk, some type of combined micro/immuno course, neuroscience and psychopathology even if these latter two are also combined. training in clinical skills, i.e. deductive reasoning, diagnosis, physical examination using the tools of the PE, suturing, splinting, imaging, ECG, and other office procedures.

That's three years. My master's required three years of coursework although light and fluffy. Most of it could've been compressed into a fall, spring, and summer as well as one semester of full-time clinicals.

We should all be licensed generalists, i.e. generally capable of doing what FNPs are presently trained to do. (The FNPs should get MORE training for that such as dedicated time in ENT, derm, sports med, medicine, et al). We should all be technically prepared and credentialed to prescribe or at least minimally refill anything. We should all have Schedule II prescriptive rights. We should all be able to declare disability, endorse death certificates, authorize emergency holds, admit patients to a hospital, etc. There's way too much state by state mess mirrored by the institution by institution eduational requirements. Whether we do all these things on our own or not isn't really a concern of mine. We could all be collaborative or all be independent. It doesn't matter to me as long as we can do what we're trained to do, and we definitely need more training - all of us.

It is a growing medical problem -- patients whose habitus, anatomy, medical and social histories and/or disease processes mean they have very poor venous access. You may recall recent state execution attempts hampered by venous access issues which were widely covered in the media.

I personally would probably not participate in continuing to stick this individual, if his access is already that poor. I continually teach my patients who get regular blood draws or infusions that the problem with repeatedly accessing the "go-to" vein is that it WILL eventually sclerose ... and then what do you have? On that fateful day when the patient becomes hypotensive, hypoxic, dysrhythmic, suffers trauma or some other EMERGENCY ... to have compromised their chance of successful resuscitation by sclerosing accessible veins without good reason is just not something I'm comfortable with.

Needless to say, this reminds me of several incidents that I encountered with the nursing staff that I managed and had to let go on my previous facility. Having said that, one in particular comes to mind a nurse on the 7-3pm shift no matter how many times I had a chat with her regarding coming to work on time, she would always walked in around 9:am or 9:30am. However, she would leave on time. Therefore, I change her shift to accommodate her schedule, since she was a single mother of 3, but she still manage to come in late after that. Then she began to miss work all together, so I had to let her go. Consequently, a month later she gave my name as a reference to a clinic nearby that was hiring

When I managed an apartment complex back in a previous life, a tenant I'd evicted for non-payment of rent (among other offenses) actually had another apartment manager call me for a reference! I couldn't believe it---this woman had trashed her unit, left a bunch of rotting food in the fridge, and let her teenager 'tag' the fence behind the apartment. She also left a scrapped car in the tenant parking area and refused to move it when she left.

Well, you can bet your bottom dollar that I gave him a string of reasons why no one with even an ounce of interest in their property would rent it to her......luckily there were no rules at the time saying that I couldn't do that.

I understand your concern regarding the patient's subsequent development of SVT. But I'm not understanding the initial hesitation about giving it, if the patient was without other history that made him particularly susceptible to lidocaine toxicity. This is an approved use of lidocaine -- if I was going to question the physician's order it would be for a specific reason.

SVT is not associated with lidocaine toxicity. Your patient likely has an EP issue.

But then again, I suppose a lot of us are capable of obtaining a nursing degree, but far less of us are capable of being NURSES. Here's some advice, if you are tired of trying to draw IV's on us "regulars", maybe it's time for you find a new profession.

First, you're a nursing student, not a nurse. You will likely never have an ED rotation during your education. You don't see the things we see from behind a nurse's badge. You don't get to use that tone with us,and in the meanwhile you can get off your high horse.

Second, there are sicklers in crisis and sicklers in "crisis." If I know your name and your regular doses, you're probably in "crisis," and I'll get to you after dealing with my ESI 1s, 2s, 3s, AND 4s. I'd put you after my 5s too, but by definition they don't need anything from me. Does it suck for you when you're actually having an honest-to-goodness crisis? Yes, but you're the one who cried wolf one too many times.

And BTW, thank you everyone who responded! I didn't know about the rapid infuser.

*** Was a Harly vs steel bridge. I got her out of the OR. We were sucking the blood out through an abdominal Whitman's pach about as fast as I was putting in with the rapid infuser. After 14 or so hours she stabilized enough to be taken to IR where they were able to see and cauterize enough bleeders that she started to not leak it out as fast as we were putting it in. 4 months in SICU, then to med-surg for a while then to rehab for a year or so. Eventualy walked out of the hospital on her own feet.

Thanks for everyone's responses! It gave me a lot to think about. I talked to my manager this morning & she said she understood. She even asked if I wanted to stay prn so in case things don't work out, I could always come back! I honestly think this is just too good of an offer to pass up. I mean how many times do you hear hospitals telling you they'll pay off your contract & pay for you to get your masters (I forgot to mention that earlier). I won't be quiting right away, that way my manager has time to find a replacement and train her. Thanks for everyone's input!